New 70mm Panavision / NASA digital cinema camera sighted at film festival

[Andrew Reid]

In May last year I reported that Pavavision were working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on sensor technology for a possible digital cinema camera. In a surprise unveling at the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Camerimage 2012) in Poland they have indeed signalled their intention to join the game.

On offer is a prototype digital cinema camera aimed at bettering the Arri, Sony and Red. It has a huge by cinema standards 70mm sensor (similar in size to full frame 35mm).

[Germy1979]

Badass!

$100,000.... :(

[Zigmars Zilgalvis]

Now we are talking! Simmilar to full frame 35mm? I imagine sensor is simmilar to 5-perf vertical pulldown film so yeah, it is bigger and in motion picture every milimeter is worth killing... you konw that wery well:)

 

Keep us posted if you find out more.

[Dr. John R. Brinkley]

Amazing development. Though film may be almost dead, good to see that NASA isn't.

[HurtinMinorKey]

As for the most important spec, does it come with a cool NASA logo?

[Xiong]

This is pretty awesome, of course we wont be able to afford it but its still hitting that tech boner of mine. More competition the better, lets see what trickles down to us.

[KahL]

Sounds great, but for a 70mm sensor, 4k is WAY TOO small a resolution. That res is reserved for a 35mm sensor. If this is meant to be digital IMAX/65mm film quality, then the resolution should be hitting 10-12k instead. Hopefully a future firmware update will make it so.

 

Obviously not an indie filmmaker's camera, of course :)

[Sean Cunningham]

You're missing the point of this sensor.  Making it the size of a 65mm (70mm is for projection, not acquisition) with lower density pixels, but still ample for compelling imagery, means this thing is going to see in the dark better than and have lower noise than smaller 4K sensors.

 

8K is closer to the scanning density that would be necessary to adequately represent the information contained on an anamorphic 35mm frame and the reason why a lot of DPs consider it wasteful, still, doing digital-IP on films acquired with anamorphic 35mm photography.  

 

This camera isn't about capturing 65mm film's potential detail, even the "little" version of 65mm.    They haven't fully replicated the full potential of 35mm yet.

[Germy1979]

For an organization that put Bruce Willis on an asteroid, this is a little sub par

[Leang]

the prototype uses C-Mount lenses.  why introduce or insinuate that?  if it's NASA then I would assume they asked Panavision for aesthetic image consultation for the best high resolutions in space, with a possible market for IMAX productions since many IMAX flicks are somewhat space or national geographic style. NASA's world deal with sensors that candle cosmic rays, and different than commercial sensors.  I would like to read a full and aethentic article as to why NASA is even mentioned.  I also read somewhere that NASA is setting up laser beam transmission receivers and transmitters so that they can broadcast in almost realtime back to Earth.  that way we can see Mars rover footage in amazing IMAX or things in almost realtime!

[Zigmars Zilgalvis]

Sounds great, but for a 70mm sensor, 4k is WAY TOO small a resolution. That res is reserved for a 35mm sensor. If this is meant to be digital IMAX/65mm film quality, then the resolution should be hitting 10-12k instead. Hopefully a future firmware update will make it so.

 

Obviously not an indie filmmaker's camera, of course :)

 

In fact, this is not meant to be IMAX quality. Imax is 15-perf horizontal pulldown, this is 5-perf vertical at best. So ~3 times less then IMAX. Anyways, this should be 8K resoultion wise. I guess final product will do so:)

[richg101]

it's not about pixels, it's about area.  even if this were a 720p sensor, for me it would still smoke any 4k  s35mm sensor with regard to capturing moving picture in a vast sense.  its the same reason why my ruined vhs copy of Zulu (shot on 70mm) still looks better than anything peter jackson shot on red epic, and projects at 4k.  Resolution isnt everything.    

[Aggrotron]

I also read somewhere that NASA is setting up laser beam transmission receivers and transmitters so that they can broadcast in almost realtime back to Earth.  that way we can see Mars rover footage in amazing IMAX or things in almost realtime!

 

While awesome, even physics can't be over-ruled; there will be a very real time delay if Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun.  The theoretical maximum time (transmission goes through the sun, which it doesn't in real life) is around 21 minutes.  The minimum time is a little past 4 minutes, when Earth and Mars are at their closest point.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, though.

[Leang]

While awesome, even physics can't be over-ruled; there will be a very real time delay if Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun.  The theoretical maximum time (transmission goes through the sun, which it doesn't in real life) is around 21 minutes.  The minimum time is a little past 4 minutes, when Earth and Mars are at their closest point.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, though.

 

sattelite beam transmitters and receivers are underway with amplification at a whole new level, explained by Michio Kaku.  I didn't mean the beams were specifically for Mars, but a new leap forward in broadcast transmissions.  with realtime HD quality transmissions from line-of-sight regions in Space its like national geographic.  I'm willing to bet in the future there will be privatized network tv channels showing 24/7 things happening in Space.  btw the Mars rover landing was ridiculously amazing. 

[tony wilson]

michio kaku is a string theory twatter.
not as bad as brit fuck wit
bbc man brian cox
these clowns ain't carl sagan.
what is a krappy kaku
a 45 sec segment science head shot specialist on dumb down news channels.
a filthy liar about what happened at we are fucked fuckishima.
a scumbag pimp gatekeeper for the bush and rothschilds crime families.
a prophet for the zombie masses.
a profit book industry for himself.
nasa is dead just rearranging the decks in between outsourcing to china.
and getting into global kill technologies.
panavision are bankrupt.
oblimey obama prefers giving grown men blowjobs and playing golf to fiscal cliffs.
cameron and clegg say britain plc is in great shape.
russian navy off the coast of syria
us marines in turkey
iceberg ahead........
we are goin down

[Xiong]

michio kaku is a string theory twatter.
not as bad as brit fuck wit
bbc man brian cox
these clowns ain't carl sagan.
what is a krappy kaku
a 45 sec segment science head shot specialist on dumb down news channels.
a filthy liar about what happened at we are fucked fuckishima.
a scumbag pimp gatekeeper for the bush and rothschilds crime families.
a prophet for the zombie masses.
a profit book industry for himself.
nasa is dead just rearranging the decks in between outsourcing to china.
and getting into global kill technologies.
panavision are bankrupt.
oblimey obama prefers giving grown men blowjobs and playing golf to fiscal cliffs.
cameron and clegg say britain plc is in great shape.
russian navy off the coast of syria
us marines in turkey
iceberg ahead........
we are goin down

 

Your comment hurt my brain... Please, use at least decent grammar or sentence structure, and do stay on topic. Last we need in a forum about cameras is political views trolling people into dimwitted heated arguments.

 

Thank you.

[tony wilson]

no decent grammar here fella.

sentence structure it's to late.

if your brain box cannot handle it madam move along now.

nothing to see here mam.

walmart is 2 blocks down on the left.

[Sean Cunningham]

Um, Tony was following the course the conversation was taking.  Or does realtime, line-of-site HD transmissions from space have SFA to do with some new 65mm sized sensor collaboration between NASA and Panavision?  This thing hasn't been on topic since the punters read "70mm" and "4K" and fabricated their own implied equivalency (that was nowhere to be found in the original article) so they could show how smart they were in pointing out both NASA and Panavision's obvious failure.

[Leang]

so they could show how smart they were in pointing out both NASA and Panavision's obvious failure.

 

EOSHD isn't the only site with this information and different forums have different minds as well.

[tony wilson]

EOSHD isn't the only site with this information and different forums have different minds as well.

listan here to me now.
no udder sight ya gonna get more trute and faxts plus peeples wid bad spieling like youse3 get here sea.
eye stating facts sea.
finds out how panavision gonna pay for a new camera SEA NOT GONNA HAPPENS NASA ONLYN EXISTS FOR BLACK OPS SPACE PROGRAMME FOR DER ROTHSCHILD BUSH FAMILY SINDY KIT.
BUSH SAID WE BEE ON MARS WE GOIN TO PUT A TEXAN ON MARS.
I SEA NO TEXANS ON MARS I SEE PREPPIN FOR ANUDDER FAKE OIL WAR DATS ALL
INFORMATY WID SUM STUFF ON TOPIX
DAT FOTO OF DER PANAVISION BOX IT CHINA PLASTIC NOT USA TITANIUM.
THANK GOD AMERICA STILL MAKING LINSEY LOHANS DATS ALL IM SAYIN